The Brand

Zonkeys, the animals, are crossbreeds between wildly beautiful zebras and hardwearing donkeys. They are rare, because Mother Nature doesn't create them without human intervention.

Zonkey Boot, the brand, was founded in 2010, by the couple Alexandra Diaconu and Michael Rollig, and has its headquarters in their hometown, Vienna, Austria. The designers’ first collection for Spring-Summer 2011 was launched in June 2010.

As a high-end men's shoe brand, Zonkey Boot aims for the highest achievable qualities in craft, skills, engineering, materials and design. Having its roots as much in big scale shoemaking as in the artisan tradition, Zonkey Boot found its matching production partner in the Veneto province of northern Italy.

We share with the Veneti their enthusiasm for everything new and beautiful and at the same time their deep appreciation for traditions in craft and lifestyle.

As Viennese we sport a sense for relaxed understatement and the simple but good things in life and we believe that Zonkey Boot’s understated luxury can easily be understood anywhere and by anybody who pays attention to beauty and quality.

THE CRAFTSMANSHIP AND THE DESIGN

Zonkey Boot shows a minimum of decoration and the maximum of shape and form. The utmost attention is paid to the lasts and materials. The recipe may seem simple but, nevertheless, these ingredients need expert craftsmanship to give an outstanding shoe.

Only high - tech shoes from synthetic materials can be designed by computers and made by robots. We still use a pencil to draw the model on the last. Our artisan products need skilled craftsmen to accomplish hundreds of single operations to finalize a pair.

Many of these steps are done with simple hand tools, like the clicking, the hand sewing of the welt or the lasting of the moccasins. Other operations are executed with heavy and sometimes dangerous mechanical machines; but it is always the guiding hand of a skilled person, which guarantees the perfect result.

The Zonkey Boot shoes are passing through the hands of more than 60 workers. Some of them are with the industry for 40-50 years now. Others are younger. Their experience combined sums up to quite a few hundreds of years of shoemaking. And this is our heritage.